Monday, October 28, 2013

Upcoming Complimentary Common Core Webinar

Attend the Galileo Innovations for Common Core Implementation webinar and learn how the current and upcoming innovations in Galileo K-12 Online are designed to facilitate local assessment and curriculum implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in districts and charters.

Common Core Assessment Innovations – View examples of Galileo item types aligned with CCSS and of the type currently under development by PARCC and SBAC.

Common Core Curricular Innovations – Discover how new Galileo technology can be used to develop and implement Common Core curricula and differentiated instruction. Dialogic technology makes it possible to deliver synchronous and asynchronous instructional communication between a teacher and either an individual student or a group of students.

Common Core Psychometric Analysis Innovations – Learn how ATI psychometric research accommodates the introduction of new item types and new scoring paradigms for Common Core assessments.

Learn more
Register
Date: Wednesday, November 13
Time: 1:00 - 1:45 p.m. EST
This webinar is complimentary.
Presenters:
Jason Feld, ATI Vice President Corporate Projects
Kerridan Kawecki, ATI Professional Development Director

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Webinar: Galileo Innovations for Common Core Implementation

Galileo K-12 Online continues to evolve in response to client needs, changing federal and state requirements, ongoing research in educational assessment and instruction, and advances in technology. A major area of ongoing Galileo innovation is focused on Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and on supporting CCSS implementation.

Attend the Galileo Innovations for Common Core Implementation webinar and learn how the current and upcoming innovations in Galileo K-12 Online are designed to facilitate local assessment and curriculum implementation of CCSS in districts and charters.

Learn more
Register
Date: Wednesday, November 13
Time: 11:00 - 11:45 a.m. MST
This webinar is complimentary.
Presenters:
Jason Feld, ATI Vice President Corporate Projects
Kerridan Kawecki, ATI Professional Development Director

Monday, October 14, 2013

Mobile Devices and Galileo Online

With the advent of mobile computing in the classroom, ATI’s list of supported mobile devices has expanded. The new system requirements, located here for K-12 and here for Pre-K, provide a list of Galileo features that are supported on low-cost devices built on operating systems including Google Android, Apple iOS, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Windows.

Monday, October 7, 2013

One Test, Many Uses

“Help! I’m stuck between my administrators who want to use the December benchmark as a predictive and my teachers who want to use the December benchmark as a summative semester final. What can I do?” 

One single benchmark, if created appropriately, can serve both purposes. 

How? 

Every state is required to have a list of standards students at each grade level need to master. It is the district’s responsibility to make sure that every child masters these standards by the end of the school year. In order to ensure this goal is achieved, many districts provide pacing guides to teachers in order to keep both teachers and students on pace to master all standards by the end of the year. These pacing guides identify which standards are supposed to be taught at what point during the year. The benchmark assessments are then created based on the district pacing guide. 

The ideal benchmark assessment should be between 35-50 items long and have no more than five items on one specific standard. Using the standards taught during the first half of the year can provide both a reliable predictor of students’ progress towards mastery of the state standards and a valid summative assessment for what students were taught in the classroom. The question then becomes how do teachers take the results of these benchmark assessments and translate them into grades?

The answer to this question depends on the district’s method for grading students. The easiest and most straightforward method is a standards-based grading system. This method of grading provides information as to whether a student has mastered a standard or skill or where he or she is at in developing the skill. Information on standards mastery can be obtained using the Galileo® K-12 Online Intervention Report.

Using benchmark assessments for a more traditional method for grading, (e.g., providing a letter grade for students based on percentages) may need more thought. In order to provide accurate ability estimates for students at all ranges of ability, it is important that there is a range of difficulties on the items and that even the student at the highest academic levels needs to be challenged. As a result, sometimes the raw scores do not represent the level of growth and success students have actually demonstrated. One example is an assessment where the average raw score percentage was 46 percent, yet students demonstrated an average growth of 20 points on their Developmental Level scores (DL). Teachers and districts can use Galileo’s benchmark data  when assigning traditional grades. One suggestion to assign grades is to generate a classroom Benchmark Results report.  The report provides information for each student’s risk assessment. By providing a grade (e.g., A for On Course, B for Low Risk, C for Moderate Risk, and D or F for High Risk), valid and reliable student data may be converted into a traditional grading system.













- Karyn White, M.A.
Educational Management Services Director



Tuesday, October 1, 2013

New ATI Home Page

You may have noticed a few changes to ATI’s home page. These updates are to make the things you need most, easily accessible.  But don’t worry – everything that once lived on the home page is still available. The K-12 Spotlight and Pre-K Spotlight are just a click away - now found on the K-12 and Pre-K landing pages, and the ATI Education Newsfeed is available on the ATI News page. 

Quick links to the ATI Townhall Blog and Galileo Overview registration are still found at the top of the webpage, but with a new design. You’ll also find ATI’s new Facebook page and ATI YouTube channel quick links there. Check them out and be sure to “like” us  on Facebook!